Issue > Poetry

Timothy Ree

Timothy Ree lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he teaches literature and writing at a public high school. He holds a BA in English from Wheaton College (IL) and an M.Div from Yale University. He is currently at work on his first manuscript.

Stations

Blood from the showerhead
or rusty water—hard to tell
in the early blue.

·

On the train
a man reading a Bible—
its cover a brown camouflage.

·

The blonde who got on tall
at Parkside—with sunglasses,
no ring.

·

I'm chasing a coffee napkin down the street, past a hydrant
painted stars and stripes—
this early, this much to bear.

·

Someone this hour, in this city
is just as drunk—puts a lit cigarette
in his coat pocket.

·

In the elevator
to feel like meat in a freezer—soon the flies,
the children.

·

No—
the room crowded with squirrels, each one
completely still.

·

Now a lesson on metaphors: soon
they will all be mixed— I am the gate, you are the branches . . .

·

Once on the sidewalk
we were mugged by falling acorn—
one of us stabbed with a beak.

·

There, not the stolen wheel, the fallen chain—
but the good frame left hanging
on the iron arch.

·

In the empty square my way home,
a phone vibrating on a stone chess table—
sound and riddle of our lives.

·

Now for the local
or the express—the express to the local back
one stop.